[obol] "Bonding With Birds" Begins This Saturday

[Cindy Ashy]

OBOLers,

Our first official "Bonding With Birds" weekend begins this Saturday at Yaquina
Head from 10:00 am - 1:00 pm. I'm hoping you guys can help us get the word out
about the program. The program will run for 10 consecutive Saturdays (same time
slot) through July 7.

3-4 volunteers will be stationed at the 3 best observation areas to view the
nesting seabirds: Tidepool Deck, Lighthouse Deck, and Trespass Cove. I will be
roving between the 3 stations. There will be 1-2 spotting scopes and extra
binoculars available at each area. This includes a couple of very high end
scopes where the clarity is still amazing at 60x....what a joy to use these!

This weekend should be mostly about courtship as all 6 of our target species
are in full courtship mode. The Pelagic Cormorants have already started
building nests.

In addition to interacting with the public, volunteers will be collecting data
on the birds and sharing this with anyone interested. Each group will have a
walkie talkie so we can work as a team to follow the details of raptor
predation. Some of us will be doing extra studies as well including mapping out
all the nests (and as much data as we can collect about each nest - # of eggs,
hatch dates, how many fledge, etc), night time predation, and keeping track of
the eyerings on gull pairs. I'll post more about this later.

We're also going to be looking for interesting behaviors like gulls stealing
milk from lactating seals, secondary predation on murre colonies (gulls),
extra-pair matings, female-female gull pairings, hybrid pairs, the possibility
of pelicans eating chicks, kleptoparasitism (food and nesting materials),
etc...

I think it's going to be a lot of fun following the entire breeding season of
these birds and really getting to know them. Kids are very welcome and we will
have step stools for them to reach the scopes.

If you come out, please say hello and let me know you're an OBOLer...I'd like
to meet more of you in person.

Cheers,

Cindy Ashy

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